I made the decision to join Talossa in 2009 because I’m something of a politics geek. Being someone who’s interested in politics obviously endeared me to a micronation where it was possible to run for office, serve as a minister, write laws, and so on. They were all things that looked cool in the real world, and things that I’d love to have a go at but perhaps n a much smaller scale. Talossa fit the bill. Not only did it have a particularly quirky and interesting culture, but it also had parliamentary elections which were contested.

The Chamber of Deputies of the Republic, though we had an issue of finding enough people to contest the election that it would result in anyone not being elected, didn’t suffer from the fun-less peculiarity of today’s electoral system, where you need only vote for yourself to be represented in the Cosa. I don’t know about you, friend, but for someone who joined Talossa for the politics, that’s a little more than a bit crap.

Politics should be about proving your party’s worth to the electorate. A party is a store; its politicians are the salesmen trying to convince you to purchase their product – their manifesto and their policies. In securing national representation by simply voting for ourself, we would be undermining the very basis of liberal democracy. Direct democracies may work well provincially, but nationally we ought to expect a lot more of our politicians.

And of course, that’s never going to happen with the current system. Our politicians literally needn’t do anything save for vote for themselves and cough up $20. There’s no requirement for them to do anything else then that turning up occasionally and voting yes or no on the Vote of Confidence. What Talossa needs is rigorous reform of its lower chamber so as to preserve the derivativist fun of political electioneering in addition to making Talossa’s politicians work as hard as they should. That reform needs to come in the shape of a drastic reduction in the number of seats we have available in the Cosa.

Under our current system, there are 200 seats up for grabs in the lower chamber. Given that the current population is 222, it is entirely ridiculous for us to maintain the façade of us being a representative democracy. We should instead look to the traditions of our past and reduce the number of seats to 20, as we had previously. 20 is not only closer to the number of actual sitting Members of the Cosa, but it also encourages the political competition that we should cherish in Talossa, because it will reward active parties and penalise apathetic ones which fail to do enough to secure representation. It will also serve to drive larger parties to work harder as well, given that internal party competition for fewer seats means that they will likely want to perform better to prove themselves worthy of the powerful political position.

Despite the fact that there are currently 18 MCs and under my proposal there would need to be 20, I accept the fact that there may be an instance where there are hundreds of Talossans wanting to be involved in politics, but won’t manage to get elected. I don’t believe this to be a particularly bad thing, however. In fact, I rather think that this would be a desirable outcome in that it would drive Talossans to cut their political teeth in provincial politics in order to prove themselves. After all, what motivation is there to engage in provincial politics if all you need to do to be an MC is stump up the fee and remember to vote for yourself?

Another point that is often made is that this will damage the ‘tradition’ of one-man parties in Talossa. Again, I believe this to be desirable. Nobody has the right to sit in the Ziu; they should be required to work hard for the privilege and the opportunity, and further, command a mandate from the electorate which is significantly greater than the mandate given by the sound of the one-man band’s trumpeting in the distance.